As Death Stranding 2: On the Beach launches to glowing reviews on everything from its narrative to its fast loading screens, Hideo Kojima has offered a candid take on how the shift to next-gen hardware has (or hasn’t) affected game development. In a recent joint media interview (reported by Game*Spark), Kojima suggests that the leap from PS4 to PS5 has been a lot less radical than previous upgrades in hardware.
“It’s a bit awkward to say this in front of Sony’s representatives (laughs), but to be honest, it hasn’t had that much impact on how we actually make the game,” Kojima said. “Things run at 60fps and look more beautiful now, but it hasn’t been as big of a leap as, say, going from the original PlayStation to the PS2.”
Kojima frames the PS5’s capabilities as part of a natural evolution of previous technology, rather than a breakthrough. Specifically, he comments that while there are definite avancements “behind the scenes,” there are not so many new things that players can feel directly.
As an exception, he mentions a special system Kojima Productions has implemented in Death Stranding 2 that converts recorded audio into haptic feedback, which was only possible on the PS5.
On a related note, former SIE executive Shuhei Yoshida recently spoke about the wall PlayStation is bound to hit with the PlayStation’s evolution. He commented that while Sony made the right choice in focusing on speed in the transition from PS4 to PS5, it will have to “change its way of thinking” when deciding what to focus on in future console development, as the pursuit of cutting edge-graphics has hit a ceiling with the PS5 Pro.
